


How Many Acres, How Much Light

by peachchild



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Domestic Bliss, M/M, Post-Recovery Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 17:48:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3578406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachchild/pseuds/peachchild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky looked skeptical. Steve loved it when he looked at him like that, with his forehead crinkled and his mouth twisted up at the corner - mostly because it was an expression almost exclusively reserved for him. </p>
<p>“You want to take a month off?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Many Acres, How Much Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tiberius_Tibia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiberius_Tibia/gifts).



> Thanks to [Kendra](http://archiveofourown.org/users/monkeydra/pseuds/monkeydra) for all her help making this seem coherent.
> 
> I also listened to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYF0qU5WSew) a lot while writing this.

Bucky finds Steve in the command center, sitting dwarfed in a large leather chair and putting the hacking skills Natasha had been teaching him to good use. He had swiveled around when Bucky came storming in. The grin he shot at him was nothing short of shit-eating, even with the blood staining the space between his teeth, and the bruise shining purple over his swollen eye. Bucky holstered his gun and dropped to his knee in front of him, cupping his face in his hands and turning his head from one side to the other, inspecting his injuries. 

“Are you alright?”

“Course I am.” Steve shrugged, rolled his eyes. His fingers found Bucky’s hair, tugged through it. “You alone?”

“Natasha and Sam are covering the exit. You ready to go?”

“Two minutes and I’ll have everything.” 

“How did you get out?”

“Stole a key off a guard’s belt.” He thumbed Bucky’s ear. “They didn’t tighten my handcuffs enough. Slipped right out of them.” 

Bucky pushed himself up enough to press their mouths together. He tasted blood. “I know you can handle yourself but fuck, Steve, you doing this makes me nervous.”

“Hey, I’ve been picking fights since I was thirteen. This is old hat.” He spun to pluck the flash drive from the computer and pushed himself to his feet. He was favoring his left side. “Anyway, we got what we came for. Let’s get out of here.”

*

The next day, Steve could barely move so he and Bucky stayed in bed. Bucky catalogued each of his bruises, rubbed his cheek against his ribs, mouthed kisses at the insides of his wrists. “I’ve missed you,” he murmured, pressing metal fingers against the nape of his neck, nudging their noses together. 

Steve hummed and petted Bucky’s hair back off his face. His eye had already turned an ugly jaundiced yellow, his accelerated healing leftover from the serum. It would probably be gone by morning. “It was only a couple of days.”

“Yeah, don’t say, ‘I missed you too.’ I see how it is.”

“ _I_ was on a mission. I had no time to miss you.” He kissed him, his fingernails scratching along his scalp. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. “I’m okay, Buck. You don’t have to take care of me.” 

“How can I? You’re such a punk about it when I try.” He braced himself on his arm, rubbed a metal hand over Steve’s sternum. Steve rolled over onto his back, his hand tucked in against the nape of Bucky’s neck. “This is still what you want to do, right?” 

“You ask once a week at least, Buck.” Steve rolled his eyes. “Yes. If it ever isn’t, I’ll tell you.” 

“That’s all I ask.” 

*

They didn’t see it coming, not really.

One day, Steve got a cold, which was unusual, though the doctors thought it wasn’t impossible, even with the serum. “It doesn’t make him superhuman,” they said. “Even the strongest, healthiest people get a cold from time to time.”

Then, Bucky severely outpaced him on a morning run. Two months later, he woke Bucky just before dawn with breaths rattling desperately into his chest, his lips slightly blue with lack of oxygen. It was then they had to admit it, even though none of them wanted to: the serum was wearing off.

It took another year to go completely. 

“I’m staying, Buck,” he said fiercely, whenever the question of retiring from SHIELD came up. “I know I can’t do what I did before, but I’m still useful, and they’re not going to tell me otherwise.” 

Of course, it didn’t take much to convince them. Even without the serum, Steve was a stunning tactician. Bucky performed well in the field with Steve’s voice in his ear, and Natasha and Sam acted swiftly and without hesitation at his orders. He was often in the field, but even when commanding in absentia, he was quick with his orders, firm with his decisions, and he trusted his team completely. 

Bucky was like a soldier back from the war every time he came in from a long mission, relieved to find Steve safe and satisfied waiting for him, straight-shouldered in his uniform, the corners of his eyes crinkled with a smile that the stern line of his mouth wasn’t willing to show in front of the others. The moment their door closed behind them, Bucky was dragging him close with his arm around his waist, his fingers digging into his hair, Steve’s hands clutching at his shoulder blades.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” Steve murmured against his mouth every time, soothing, his fingertips tracing the lines of his face. “We’re home. Just you and me, Buck.” Bucky liked to lay stretched out on the couch on days like this, blanketing Steve, his head tucked under his chin. They watched cartoons and dozed in the soft light of the sun through their blinds. Steve ran his fingertips along the knobs of Bucky’s spine, felt the tension run out of him.

“What would make you happy?” Bucky murmured against his throat. 

“Just you,” Steve responded, automatically. “You’re here, and I’m happy.”

And Bucky was quiet because, for now, that was enough.

*

“You need to keep an eye on your boy.” 

Steve looked up from his book, frowned at Sam through his glasses. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged, absently stirring his coffee, and peered out his kitchen window, “He just seems a little… fragile right now.” 

“Do you think so?” Steve followed his line of sight. Bucky was throwing a tennis ball for the little terrier Sam had adopted. Natasha sat outside with him, basking in the sun, eyes shielded by giant aviators. She had cropped her hair short at some point in the past year, a pixie cut strangely reminiscent of Peter Pan. 

“You don’t see it?”

Steve pushed himself to his feet, padded over to the door to watch him. “I’ve always been a little blind when it comes to Bucky,” he admitted quietly. “I guess I see what I want to see.”

“You guys have been kind of going non-stop lately.” Sam leaned his hip against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. “It could just be exhaustion. Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t just collapsed without the serum to keep you going.” 

Steve snorted. “Sheer willpower. I’ve been doing this since I was a kid. If I pretend I’m not weak, and not tired, and not sick, then I won’t be. It used to drive Bucky crazy. It nearly got me killed a few times.”

“Good to see you’ve grown out of that,” Sam deadpanned. “I think Bucky’s struggling to keep up.” 

“He knows he doesn’t have to do this just because I am.”

“He might know that you believe that, but I don’t think _he_ believes that.” He gestured out toward Bucky where he sat in the yard, roughing up the excited dog. “You know he’s been following you into battle for a long time. He might not realize that he’s allowed to stop.” 

“You say that like I have to give him permission.” 

“That’s not what I meant.” Sam huffed out a breath. “I just mean - in the war, not fighting with you meant being apart from you. Maybe he doesn’t realize that it’s different now. Even if you stay with SHIELD, he doesn’t have to. You’ll still come home to him at the end of the day.”

“He thinks he needs to look after me.”

“Because of course you never give him any reason to think that you might get yourself killed one day.”

Steve grinned in spite of himself, rubbed the back of his neck. “Alright, I hear you. I’ll talk to him. I suppose at the very least, we could both use a vacation.”

*

Bucky looked skeptical. Steve loved it when he looked at him like that, with his forehead crinkled and his mouth twisted up at the corner - mostly because it was an expression almost exclusively reserved for him. 

“You want to take a month off?”

He shrugged, toyed with the unraveling hem of his t-shirt. It hung too big on him, leaving his collarbones exposed, a leftover from when he was still much bigger. “We haven’t taken any leave since you started working for SHIELD - not even when the serum started going. It seems overdue.”

“Any reason in particular you’d like to do it now?” Bucky sat down on the edge of the bed to wriggle his feet into his running shoes.

Steve bit back a smile, because of course Bucky saw right through him. “I’m tired. Aren’t you tired?”

“I’m always tired. I spend all my time chasing you around.” He caught Steve’s wrist, pulled him closer. “Seriously, talk to me.”

Steve tugged a hair tie off his wrist with his teeth, scraped Bucky’s hair back into a ponytail at the top of his head. “I’m worried about you,” he said as he stretched the tie around his hair, avoiding his gaze. 

Bucky looked up at him, shaking the stray hairs off his face. He slid his hand up Steve’s back. “Why?”

“You know why. You’re exhausted. Everyone sees it.”

Bucky snorted. “So you’ve been talking about me?”

“Don’t be a hypocrite. I know you whine to Sam about me all the time.”

“Only because you’re going to get yourself killed one of these days.”

“So are you at this rate,” Steve shot back. The silence was tense, even with Steve’s thumb brushing gently at Bucky’s ear, and Bucky’s hands smoothing along Steve’s sides. “It’s your decision,” he said quietly. “Whether or not you take time off, I mean. But regardless if _you_ do, _I’m_ going to.” 

“You know you can be a pain in the ass, right?”

“Yes,” Steve said plainly. “It suits me, don’t you think?”

*

Bucky had brunch with Natasha (which she insisted he pay for due to some so far carefully undisclosed debt he owed her) and afterwards shouldered his way into the house with a stack of books he kept balanced with his chin. Steve crooked an eyebrow at him from his yoga mat by the back door. “What’s all that?”

He dropped the books with a _plop_ on the kitchen table. “Well, I told Natasha that I’d read _Crime and Punishment_ last year, and she was horrified to discover I’d read it in English. So she demanded I read it again in the original Russian. She also gave me everything else Dostoevsky’s ever written, some Tolstoy and a little bit of Nabokov.”

“Didn’t Nabokov write in English?”

“Yes. She insists _Lolita_ is better in Russian. We argued about it for a while but then she threatened me with a fork, and I’m not totally sure what her combat skills with forks are and didn’t want to risk it, so I gave up.” 

Steve laughed, bent forward over his leg to stretch out his calves, grasping at his toes. “Well, at least you’ll have something to keep you entertained this month. I was worried you’d be climbing the walls.”

“I might still be. The Russians are devastating.”

“I know; I’m friends with Natasha too.” 

Bucky grinned at him, wandered over to drop a kiss on his head. “Need any help?” 

“Wouldn’t mind you cracking my back.” 

Since the serum had worn off, Steve’s muscles often ached, no doubt a side effect from what was essentially accelerated atrophy. He’d taken to practicing yoga and a regimen of stretches that also soothed the flurry of anxieties in his head. He preferred to run, to feel the flames in his chest and legs burning the more poisonous thoughts, but he couldn’t do that to the same extent, even with an inhaler on hand, and it often left him more frustrated than he was to begin with.

Bucky waited for him to stand up, then curled his hands around his hips, pressing his thumbs into the small of his back. He pressed there, with Steve leaning his head against his shoulder and arching a little, until they heard the little _pop_ of his joints. Bucky slid his arms around his waist then, dragged him in to press a kiss against his neck. “It’s a beautiful day. We should work in the garden.”

“I need to go get those poppies for the side of the house,” Steve murmured lazily, letting Bucky sway him a little from side to side. The afternoon sun was beginning to crest over the house, creeping across the carpet toward his bare toes. “They were all in bloom at the nursery on Saturday.”

“I could go with you.” 

“I thought the pollen made you sneeze.”

“Says the guy with all the allergies in the world.” Bucky spoke with his mouth against Steve’s temple, his fingers running along his ribs. He could already tell by the loose ease of Steve’s body that they weren’t going anywhere any time soon. He wasn’t going to press it either; if he could get him to sit still for five minutes, he counted it a good day. “Why don’t we go sit on the swing for a while? Get some sun.”

Steve didn’t protest, even allowed Bucky to lead him by the hand. The swing was a big wooden monster of a thing that Bucky and Sam had built when Bucky had first come home. His therapist had thought that, since so much of his identity was focused on what he could physically do, that having something to do with his hands, that he chose to do, might help him focus his energy.

It was the color of blue Easter eggs, and Steve had picked out plush red cushions for it, big enough for them to sprawl out on, which they did now, letting it gently creak back and forth. Steve was on his back, tucked up against Bucky’s chest, his eyes closed. It was late March and the weather had turned, the snow bleeding into rain and finally allowing the sun to crack through. Steve was outside as much as he could be, soaking up the sun like a flower. He often came in pink across the back of his neck, with freckles popping up on the tip of his nose and across his cheekbones, and Bucky loved him even more, let the feeling swell up inside of him, filling all of the empty spaces of him that were left. 

Steve hummed softly, tracing his fingertips over the spaces between Bucky’s knuckles. “Should’ve grabbed my sketchbook.” He waved a hand in the general direction of the fence, and Bucky noted the cat picking its way daintily along the top. The sun behind him cast a long shadow across the grass, and he could see why Steve might like to draw it. 

“You’ll just have to remember it for later. I’m not letting you get up.”

He huffed and wiggled around just to be contrary, his pointy elbows making acquaintance with Bucky’s ribs. “Don’t you have Russians to read?”

“Didn’t we decide Nabokov was American?”

“I’m not sure we decided that.”

“Shut up.” There was a smile in his voice. “Sam said he was going to come to dinner later, maybe, if that was okay with you.”

“Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Dunno. I’ve been enjoying just us. Thought maybe you had been too.”

Bucky dug his fingers into his side until Steve yelped at the ticklishness. “You’re such a punk.”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “I get that a lot.”

*

Bucky came to bed late, smelling like glue and paint. Steve immediately curled around him, pressing his face against his t-shirt. “You finish your airplane?” His voice was sleepy and muffled, raspy around the edges. 

He hummed an affirmative, cupping his hand around the back of Steve’s neck. “I might need you to touch up the paint job. I couldn’t get the little details right. Kept slipping.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.” He rubbed his cheek against Bucky’s chest, nosed in against his neck. “That’s what you get for building models at one in the morning.” 

“It’s not one in the - oh.” Steve’s eyes were still closed but he figured Bucky had looked at the clock on the nightstand. “Damn, I lost track of time. I meant to be in before you went to bed. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I was waiting up.” 

“You were passed out when I walked in, you liar.” 

“Okay, I was _trying_ to wait up.” Steve made a face and rubbed a hand over Bucky’s stomach. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Bucky murmured, curling his fingers into the hair at the nape of Steve’s neck. “Can I tell you something?”

Steve opened his eyes. The room was dark except for a shaft of moonlight draping itself across the end of their bed. “Of course. What is it?” 

“I don’t want to go back to SHIELD.”

Steve wiggled around to put his head on the pillow next to Bucky’s. He rubbed his knuckles along his jaw. Bucky’s eyes were closed. “I know.” 

“I’m just so _tired_ , Steve.” His voice broke over the words, and he rubbed his hand over his eyes. “I’m so tired.” 

“I know, Buck.” Steve rolled onto his back, pulling Bucky against him. Bucky was like a blanket draped over him, heavy and warm. “You don’t have to go back.” 

They were quiet for a long time. Steve twirled strands of Bucky’s hair around his fingertips. Bucky traced the line of Steve’s elbow with his thumb, over and over. Steve had cracked the window before he got in bed, and he could smell cilantro and mint where he had planted it in their garden. The swing outside creaked, rocking in the breeze. 

“What do you want to do instead?” 

Bucky shrugged one shoulder, half-asleep already. Steve wondered how long he’d been letting the thought fester, too apprehensive about his reaction to be able to relax. “I just want to be able to figure it out,” he said softly, his voice thick and drowsy. “I want to have a chance to think about what I want to do.”

Steve tugged gently at his hair. “That’s all I want for you. To have the choice. And to be with me. Not necessarily in that order.”

Bucky snorted out a laugh, and Steve thought it might have been the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. 

“More of that too. Lots of laughing.” 

“I think I can manage that.”


End file.
